The invention relates generally to various aspects of a beamformer (BF) for an ultrasound system.
In conventional ultrasound systems, a variety of beamformer (BF) designs have been proposed to perform the functions of the beamformer associated with the signals transmitted to and received from transducer elements of an ultrasound probe. The beamformer performs signal processing on a matrix of input signals received from a number of the transducer elements in the probe. The transducer elements transmit (fire) ultrasound pulses to scan a region of interest and generate input signals when the transducer elements receive ultrasound echoes from the region of interest in response to the ultrasound scan. Conventional beamformers combine at least subsets of the matrix of input signals to form one or more BF receive beams. The input signal received from each transducer is referred to as a transducer channel and multiple transducer channels are combined to form a receive beam or line. Conventional probes may offer 64 or 128 or 256 transducer channels. The beamformer includes components that control transmission and reception by each transducer element. The beamformer uses predetermined sets of delays to form each transmit beam and receive beam.
The beamformer components are designed to use a different set of delays with the same set of input channels or input signals to obtain or form multiple receive beams. The multiple receive beams are associated with the ultrasound echoes from focal points along multiple scan lines for a given ultrasound pulse. The signals received from multiple transducer elements may be processed simultaneously into multiple receive beams. The collection and processing of echo information along multiple scan lines simultaneously within the subject is referred to as multi-line acquisition (MLA). Heretofore, limited communications capabilities existed between the distributed processing within the beamformer and the central control of the beamformer. Existing systems experienced limitations in the amount and type of control information that could be processed by the electronics within the beamformer.
A need exists for an improved communications and control link between the distributed processing of individual channels in the beamformer and the beamformer controller.